[SpiffyGuyC]

Hey everyone...

It looks like I'm going to be giving up the ol' Pismo 500 for a TiBook 400 over the weekend, or early next week. I am *very* seriously considering the 400MHz --> 500MHz hack that has been posted, as I have yet to hear of anyone getting negative results.

I'd like to know if anyone here has performed this "minor surgery" on your Ti, and what the results have been. Also, if you could provide the methods used - the site linked to above seems to have been updated to state that you can just use a solder bridge rather than moving the required resistors - anyone done it this way? And how long can I be soldering before frying the board?!? If it is that easy, and it's true that most of the chips in the 400MHz TiBooks are rated at 500+ anyway, I'm pretty confident that I am going to go for this.

Of course, if I go through with this I will be sure to take plenty of pictures and post the results. I'm actually quite excited considering how stupidly dangerous this could turn out to be.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

-S

[zac4mac]

I used "solder bridges" to change the bus multiplier settings on my 500 Mystic(gigabit duallie) in December from 5x to 5.5x (550) and it works fine.
Don't spend much time (1-3 seconds max) swirling solder, or you'll lift a pad. If you do lift a pad, gently clean the area with alcohol and a fine artists brush and apply a small dab of epoxy to it.

Zack

I followed the instructions at voelker.com and used the solder bridge technique. It's very easy just don't linger with the soldering iron. Mine's been oc'ed for 9 weeks with absolutely no problems. It's noticably faster with Photoshop and Final Cut. MPEG-2 conversion is for 1 hour of material has gone from 4hrs 20mins to 3hrs 15mins. The speed increase is even noticable in normal day to day use. Iguess what I'm saying is I highly recomend it-as long as you don't mind voiding your warranty.

[SpiffyGuyC]

Well this seems to be great news, thanks. I did email Richard Voelker, and got the following response which may be useful to anyone else considering the hack:

Absolutely no problems reported!

Here are some things to watch before
- the bottom case 'latches' in front of the CDROM drive slot...don't snap it off.

Here are some things to watch during:
- don't loiter with the soldering iron, you'll burn traces
- don't 'jam' the board with the tip of the soldering iron. Be delicate.
- total contact time on the main logic by the soldering iron tip is probably no more than a total of about 5-10 seconds for the WHOLE procedure

Here are some things to watch after:
- battery life will be slightly reduced
- fan may come on more often
- unit will feel warmer

Sounds worthwhile to me. I will be ordering the TiBook tomorrow.

Using the solder bridge method, I just pretty much create a line of solder from the two unused contacts to the ones currently holding the resistor, correct? I'm assuming that the new solder simply needs to make contact with what's currently there (I have never done bridging before, just simple soldering . . . don't worry, I will have a more experienced friend helping out!). Lemme know if I'm mistaken on this one.

Looks like the TiBook will arrive around the middle of next week, so if anyone has any further advice or comments, please do post before then! Wish me luck!

-S

can you overclock a 500?


or does this just work for a 400. I'd love a 550 or 600 machine, hehe

[SpiffyGuyC]

can you overclock a 500?


or does this just work for a 400. I'd love a 550 or 600 machine, hehe

I haven't seen any instructions for this, nor would I know what resistors would be responsible for such a switch...but, I would offer that running a TiBook faster than 500 is probably not a great idea purely out of heat concerns. I've heard that it's pretty hot as-is, and a processor will lose stability if heat does get out-of-hand.

Of course, somebody is bound to try it sooner or later!

-S

[FD]

SpiffyGuyC
You'll want to use a soldering iron with the smallest tip you can find and a magnifying glass helps immensly(those surface mount resistors are very, very small). And yes solder bridge is just making a solder trace across the contacts instead of trying to resolder the resistor.

[SpiffyGuyC]

What a day . . . my TiBook arrives AND my 150th post (this one)! If everything goes well, the next time I post to this forum I will be at a speedy 500Mhz - wish me luck!

-S

[Whisper]

Originally posted by SpiffyGuyC:
<STRONG>What a day . . . my TiBook arrives AND my 150th post (this one)! If everything goes well, the next time I post to this forum I will be at a speedy 500Mhz - wish me luck!

-S</STRONG>

Did it work?

I overclocked my PB G4/400 to 500 MHz a couple of months back. My machine is equipped with a rev. 1.2 ppc7410 CPU.

The procedure itself was a matter of minutes and the PB worked flawlessly in MacOS 9.1 (tested in an hour-long Photoshop stress-test) and in MacOS X 10.0.0.

The PB wouldn't boot correctly into MacOS X 10.0.3 though, since the hardware recognition seems to have changed.

I changed back to 400MHz after a couple of weeks, since I wanted to use OS X more often. Haven't tried this with 10.0.4, though.

hth,

Sebastian ( [email protected] )

[FD]

Sebastian N. - I routinely run 10.0.4 on my OC'ed TiBook with no problems.

FD - Do you have a rev. 1.2 or 1.3 CPU?

[SpiffyGuyC]

Bah, I'm so sorry everyone - went and got sick right after the new 'book arrived. Will do the overclock in the next day or two and of course report back.

[SpiffyGuyC]

Greetings from the 500Mhz TiBook . . . piece of cake, I would highly recommend this to anyone who thinks they are capable.

-S

[FD]

Sebastian N., I have a rev. 1.3 CPU

Well, mine has a rev. 1.2 CPU and OS X (10.0.4, too) doesn't work in OCed mode. The machine crashes with a kernel panic during boot.

OS 9.1 works flawlessly, though.

So for anyone having a PB G4 with a rev. 1.2 CPU I don't recommend the OCing if you want to use OS X.


Sebastian N.


P.S.: LinuxPPC works with the OCed CPU.

[shawn_hsiao]

Hmm ... I have a revision 1.2 CPU and OC'ed to 500Mhz for more than a month now. It runs 10.0.4 fine, as it is my primary OS now. 8) Maybe I am just lucky.

BTW, I also run L2CacheConfig, with a ratio of 1.5.